Killing the Environment by Stealth

Master strategist Newt Gingrich, after he stormed Capitol Hill in 1995, made a huge tactical blunder. He and his supporters, eager to repay their corporate backers, trumpeted their plans to dismantle 25 years of legal safeguards for our air, water and public lands.

Somehow they missed the fact that four in five Americans wanted tougher, not weaker, environmental protection. But top Republicans quickly learned their lesson.

However muted, though, the song remains the same. Congressional leaders are working covertly to undermine both our heritage and our health. They have seized on two principal weapons, each designed to elude the radar and the wrath of public opinion.

The first is a sly device called a budget rider. It allows lawmakers to piggyback anti-environmental provisions on top of must-pass legislation like the federal budget and highway bills--a form of legal blackmail that triggered government shutdowns just a few years ago. The second, nearly as devious, is the budget cut. This allows Congress to reduce or eliminate funding and thereby cripple the federal agencies that enforce our environmental laws.

To those who bemoan all constraints on oil drilling, clear-cutting and strip-mall development, the beauty of these weapons is their relative invisibility. They make it easier for Congress to advance the interests of habitual corporate polluters.

Dozens of anti-environmental riders have either been introduced or are in the pipeline. Many of these should outrage anyone concerned about America’s environment. Take, for example, a defense bill rider by Sen. Dirk Kempthorne (R-Ida.), which would create a new Air Force bombing range in Idaho’s spectacular Owyhee Canyonlands. Or a move by Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) to waive environmental laws to allow a road to be built through a wildlife refuge in southwest Alaska.

Other such legislative missiles, while having nationwide implications, hit closer to home. A rider by Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) would freeze fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks, and another by Rep. Joe Knollenberg (R-Mich.) would ban all federal efforts to cut global warming pollution until the Kyoto climate-change treaty is submitted to the Senate.

One of many riders attached to the federal highway bill signed into law June 9 will delay air visibility standards in America’s national parks for nearly a decade. Do Californians really want more haze over Yosemite, Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks? Aren’t our wilderness areas polluted enough already?

As for budget cuts, many of these go straight to the heart of California’s environment. The Republican budget proposal, which would trim $5 billion from environmental programs, targets the Superfund program, for instance, freezing and later reducing funding for toxic waste cleanups at Superfund sites across the United States. Some sites in the Los Angeles area are known to be contaminating our ground water. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 20 California locations would be affected if $650 million in proposed Superfund cuts are not restored.

Also slated for trimming in the GOP’s budget draft are the federal land acquisition program--the main source of funding for L.A.’s backyard wilderness, the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area--and the California Bay-Delta Initiative, which is supposed to ensure safe, reliable drinking water for Southern California into the next century.

An aroused citizenry stopped the 1995-96 all-out assault on the environment in its tracks. But how are we to defend against this piecemeal campaign in which stealth is the key?

One way is to pass the Defense of the Environment Act, sponsored by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), which gives members of Congress the opportunity to vote separately on any provision that would weaken existing environmental protections. This measure, defeated as an amendment in the House, will soon get a second chance in the Senate. Should that fail, the burden once again will be on President Clinton to veto bills that contain these onerous provisions.

Americans have a right to know what their legislators are up to. America’s environment is too important for Congress to legislate away under cover of darkness.

Then again, our congressional leaders are rightly frightened of the consequences should they act in the light of day. As they learned the hard way in 1996, the American people simply won’t stand for it.